A Curious Little Hearing

WASHINGTON — Julia Trigg Crawford is a longnecked drink of Lone Star who runs the farm along the Red River in northwest Texas that her family has owned since 1948. When cotton was king, her granddaddy raised cotton. Now, she raises soybeans and corn. She also raises a little hell. Back in 2008, the nice people from TransCanada came calling. They asked Crawford if they could have an easement across her land in order to build a piece of the blog's old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the elongated death-funnel designed to bring the world's filthiest fossil fuel from an ecological moonscape in Alberta, down the middle of the North American continent, and eventually to Texas, where what product hasn't already spilled out all over the landscape, poisoning watersheds and murdering ducks, will be put on tankers and sold to the entire world.

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However, Julia's mother did not raise a fool when she raised Julia. Pipelines leak and oil companies lie, and that is generally a bad combination all the way around for farmers. She irrigates 400 acres from Bois d'Arc Creek, and she wasn't about to give them the horizontal drilling rights under it. Besides, she told them, the guy in the next farm over would be more than happy to let you run your pipeline over his land. Go ask him! No, TransCanada told her, we want to build our death-funnel across your property and, taking advantage of the ludicrous Texas permit system, that's pretty much what they did.

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"We didn't want to be the guinea pigs to clean up tar sands in Texas waters," she told the subcommittee. "TransCanada said 'We're coming anyway.' "

(Perhaps the most preposterous moment came when some archaeologists found 145 ancient artifacts of the Caddo Indian tribe in one of Julia's pastures. The Texas Historical Commission told her that the entire pasture probably qualified to be included in the National Registry Of Historic Places — the entire pasture, that is, except for the exact sliver through which TransCanada wanted to run the pipeline. Jesus, fellas, just use a gun next time. It's more honorable.)

"All they have to do is trot out the mantras," she said. "We're creating jobs and energy independence. And the hotter the heat, the bigger the numbers. But if you look at the reports on the jobs, you see that some of them are for dancers and choreographers, and we're not talking about the ballet."

Julia Crawford came to town yesterday to testify before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. (And, given the Tea Partyish nature of the House, you can imagine what bats are flying around in that particular belfry. Alas for pure comedy gold, Louie Gohmert of Texas absented himself from the proceedings.) Under discussion was the Private Property Rights Protection Act, a measure that has appeared pretty regularly in the Congress since the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London, which substantially expanded the power of local and state governments to take property for the purposes of economic development. In fact, joining Crawford on the panel was Susette Kelo, the plaintiff in that case. (And, to be entirely fair, Kelo was a dubious ruling at the time and looks even worse in retrospect. The project for which New London took Susette Kelo's home completely fell through, and where her house once stood is now a vacant lot full of feral cats.) The Kelo decision is a favorite in the conservative political hymnal, although it is often translated as simply an exercise in "government power," and not, as was the case, an instance of private interests enlisting the power of the government to advance their economic agendas, something of which the Republicans don't altogether disapprove. Susette Kelo was treated by the subcommittee, and especially by chairman Trent Franks of Arizona, as a lonely martyr to an activist judiciary and overweening government power. Meanwhile, Julia Crawford was the woman who wasn't there. You could see Franks shift uncomfortably when Crawford explained how she couldn't support the act in question.

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"When we asked for an element of proof, their tariff schedule, TransCanada said they wouldn't have it until the product started flowing," she told the subcommittee. "In other words, they could not produce this particular proof that they were entitled to take my land until after my land was condemned, handed over to them, construction was completed, and the tar-sands were flowing.

"These examples of abuse are why TransCanada and the Keystone XL must not be granted an exemption and it's why I cannot support this bill in its entirety. If we allow these exemptions, we will set a dangerous precedent, leaving us open to a further abuse of our legal system and abuse of landowners."

You will not be shocked to learn that the Private Property Rights Protection Act has a loophole that will allow TransCanada to keep taking people's land to build its pipeline. What is hanging fire now is the stretch of pipeline running from the Canadian border to Oklahoma. That's the portion of the project that still is awaiting the president's decision. TransCanada simply split off the southern leg of the project, renamed it the Keystone Gulf Coast Project, and went on beavering away across people's property, which it would be able to do even if the act in question passed.

"The exception says that any project that's currently using eminent domain doesn't have to comply," Crawford said. "And that's going to be the pipeline."

But Crawford effectively middled Franks, trapping him between two Republican shibboleths — the FREEEEDOOOOOMMMMM! condemnation of the Kelo decision, and the nearly fanatical Republican devotion to the pipeline project. He practically begged Scott Bullock, the conservative lawyer who fought the Kelo case, to explain why what was done by a city government in Connecticut was tyranny, but when the same thing is done by a Canadian energy corporation in Texas, why that's just a free-market solution to our nation's energy needs. He also asked for an explanation for why a Canadian company's pipeline qualifies as a public utility in Texas. This was a tough assignment, but Bullock, defender of freedom, was up to the task.

"Isn't it true that things like pipelines traditionally have been accepted as public use and a public utility, and it protects a traditional pre-Kelo use of eminent domain power?" Franks asked. "Can you give us a contrast?"

"Sure," Bullock said. "That is something that Justice Thomas in his dissent in Kelo said. He took the most restrictive definition of eminent domain possible, He noted that utilities typically been granted. That is quite different from government taking land directly from one private individual and handing it to another."

(Yeah, it's worse. For one thing, what TransCanada is doing is completely non-transparent and is subject to almost no oversight at all.)

Franks nearly wept with gratitude. Julia Crawford looked like she wanted to feed them both to the corn-shucking machine.

In the annals of American bag-jobs, the Keystone XL pipeline is going to rank right at the top. Leaving aside the fact that the whole thing, from source to distribution and use, is an environmental catastrophe, the project itself has been replete with the corporate bullying of ordinary citizens, the wholescale subleasing of local and state governments, and outright oligarchical arrogance that would have embarrassed Jay Gould. (TransCanada isn't even trying to lie well any more.) The only good thing to come out of it is that it has prompted a spate of grassroots environmental activism from many unlikely quarters, from Randy Thompson's farm in the Red River to Julia Crawford's little slice of heaven along the Red River.

"I was so disappointed that they didn't ask me any questions," Crawford said. "I was loaded for bear." She's been fronting the whole fight herself, and this weekend, there's going to be a benefit concert on her farm to help pay the legal bills. And the blog would like to borrow a phrase from another Texas legend, Joe Bob Briggs. The blog says check it out.